Chaos Faction - February 20, 2014

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2014-02-19 11:06:10 pm

2014-02-02 02:13:46 pm

Game Page: Doesn't exist yet

Chaos Faction (Any %) (Single Segment)

Decision: Reject

Reason: Needs more polish for a run this short

https://queue.speeddemosarchive.com/queue/verificationfiles/900/

This run will be available for a month. After that these link(s) will no longer work.

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2014-02-02 02:13:51 pm

Run Information

Chaos Faction (Any %) (Single Segment)

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/chaosfaction/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by Feb. 16, 2014.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

After 2 weeks I will read all of the verifications and move this thread to the main verification board and post my verdict.

TheBarrel

Edit history:

TheBarrel: 2014-02-12 02:35:56 pm

2014-02-03 12:37:30 am

It's weather time!

This was a good run. Lots of effective pausing tricks and so forth. There are a few mistakes here and there. I think the most notable time loss would be against Commando seeing as the player died and lost a couple seconds from re-spawning. Pretty good execution besides that and even the little mistakes weren't all that bad overall.

Of course there was no cheating.

Audio was fine. I do think it could be turned down a touch, but the game runs stupidly loud by default so I'd put that more on the game's end more so than the player. I think the player's brightness setting thing came up at around 1:28 in the video, but it goes away after a second. Other than that everything was fine.

[later edit after reading the runner's comments] I didn't see the run comments until recently, and I saw that this was way more than the runner's PB. Which shows to me that this run could not only be improved, but that it has improved before the run was even submitted, really. Because of that I think I'm going to have to change my decision to a reject, but I do want to see this runner put in a few more serious attempts before submitting again.

I think there's some potential to this run, but some optimization on some of the stages (like the aforementioned Commando stage) would really help things here.

This was a good run. Lots of effective pausing tricks and so forth. There are a few mistakes here and there. I think the most notable time loss would be against Commando seeing as the player died and lost a couple seconds from re-spawning. Pretty good execution besides that and even the little mistakes weren't all that bad overall.

Of course there was no cheating.

Audio was fine. I do think it could be turned down a touch, but the game runs stupidly loud by default so I'd put that more on the game's end more so than the player. I think the player's brightness setting thing came up at around 1:28 in the video, but it goes away after a second. Other than that everything was fine.

[later edit after reading the runner's comments] I didn't see the run comments until recently, and I saw that this was way more than the runner's PB. Which shows to me that this run could not only be improved, but that it has improved before the run was even submitted, really. Because of that I think I'm going to have to change my decision to a [b]reject[/b], but I do want to see this runner put in a few more serious attempts before submitting again.

I think there's some potential to this run, but some optimization on some of the stages (like the aforementioned Commando stage) would really help things here.

ktwo

2014-02-09 02:28:14 am

I've played this game for 10 minutes.

A/V good and the gameplay looks legit.

This is sort of a weird game to speedrun (at least with today's knowledge). It's a SSBM type of game, but your main attacks are very weak and fairly easy to dodge for the opponents (which can also fight back pretty hard). There are random weapon drops that speed things up, but it becomes quite unreliable in the long run. The best way seems to be to find exploits in the enemies' movements and for example lure them to jump into the void.

Now for the submitted run, there were lots of unintentional deaths, missed attacks in abundance etc etc. To see exactly how unforgiving the game was, I had to try the game out for myself. After having spent a minute or two to become familiar with the controls, I decided to see if I could match the time in this run on the first level (alpine). In less than five tries, I managed to beat the time by 10 sec (by luring the enemy into the void). I wouldn't consider it a 100% strat, but good enough to be worth a few extra resets in a short game like this (even though I haven't played through the rest of the game to know how hard it becomes near the end). It could probably have been even faster by combining with weapon drops, but I didn't try to optimize or anything.

While I couldn't find traces of any speedrun activity or information elsewhere for this game, my feeling is that this can be improved by quite a lot with better strats and more attempts (which was also confirmed on at least the first level after testing). It doesn't feel good to recommend a reject for a game without having played through it, but that's still what I'm gonna do

REJECT

I've played this game for 10 minutes.

A/V good and the gameplay looks legit.

This is sort of a weird game to speedrun (at least with today's knowledge). It's a SSBM type of game, but your main attacks are very weak and fairly easy to dodge for the opponents (which can also fight back pretty hard). There are random weapon drops that speed things up, but it becomes quite unreliable in the long run. The best way seems to be to find exploits in the enemies' movements and for example lure them to jump into the void.

Now for the submitted run, there were lots of unintentional deaths, missed attacks in abundance etc etc. To see exactly how unforgiving the game was, I had to try the game out for myself. After having spent a minute or two to become familiar with the controls, I decided to see if I could match the time in this run on the first level (alpine). In less than five tries, I managed to beat the time by 10 sec (by luring the enemy into the void). I wouldn't consider it a 100% strat, but good enough to be worth a few extra resets in a short game like this (even though I haven't played through the rest of the game to know how hard it becomes near the end). It could probably have been even faster by combining with weapon drops, but I didn't try to optimize or anything.

While I couldn't find traces of any speedrun activity or information elsewhere for this game, my feeling is that this can be improved by quite a lot with better strats and more attempts (which was also confirmed on at least the first level after testing). It doesn't feel good to recommend a reject for a game without having played through it, but that's still what I'm gonna do

REJECT

AlecK47

2014-02-11 09:36:18 am

A/V good, no cheating detected. The runner moves splits on screen, but it's several seconds after the run ends and would be easy to remove

I'm of two minds about this run, and I'm pretty sure I'd have to play the game for several hours at least to get a good feel for it. There are several stages that just look really unoptimized. That along with ktwo getting a better time in Alpine so quickly makes me want to reject this run. At the same time there are plenty of nice tricks and manipulations, I can't say the rng in this run seems bad for a game like this, and even on easy the AI seems to be fairly tough. There is a thread for the game (https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/chaos_faction.html), and five of the six posts in it are by one person (presumably the runner, but perhaps not), so I can't say there was no call for community assistance. On that note, I suppose I'll give this a weak accept, and hope some more people are motivated to improve strats throughout the run, if not the run itself.

A/V good, no cheating detected.  The runner moves splits on screen, but it's several seconds after the run ends and would be easy to remove

I'm of two minds about this run, and I'm pretty sure I'd have to play the game for several hours at least to get a good feel for it.  There are several stages that just look really unoptimized.  That along with ktwo getting a better time in Alpine so quickly makes me want to reject this run.  At the same time there are plenty of nice tricks and manipulations, I can't say the rng in this run seems bad for a game like this, and even on easy the AI seems to be fairly tough.  There is a thread for the game (https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/chaos_faction.html), and five of the six posts in it are by one person (presumably the runner, but perhaps not), so I can't say there was no call for community assistance.  On that note, I suppose I'll give this a weak accept, and hope some more people are motivated to improve strats throughout the run, if not the run itself.

djcj

Edit history:

djcj: 2014-02-12 05:18:29 am

2014-02-12 05:17:08 am

@AlecK: That is the runner. The video posted in the thread is identical and his nick is mentioned in the video file name.

So, why submit a 14:07 run if the runner's best time (according to him) is 13:34, which is a time difference of more than half a minute? And there are sub-optimal executed levels.

So from me this is a REJECT.

By the way, I'd say timing starts after gaining control on the swamp level at about 0:23 and ends when the "you win" message appears in the last level, which would be a final time of ~13:49.

AlecK47

2014-02-12 03:22:54 pm

Fair enough, I didn't actually check the video in the thread or look at the whole file name.

SDAVerification

2014-02-19 11:06:13 pm

Decision posted.

darkid

2014-02-21 01:28:44 pm

Don't know if I should comment here, but I am the runner in question. My offscreen PB is slightly better due to a crappy graphics card--I lose a few frames while recording, which can cause missed jumps etc. Thank you all for your suggestions, I will look into better strategies, especially to do with the void pushes. I agree that I should be dying less as well.

ktwo

2014-02-22 05:50:58 am

Glad to hear that you seem to have the right mentality and have decided to push the time down even further. Reading through some of the comments, the overall feeling is maybe a bit harsh. There were good points in the run as well, so I'm sure you have the capacity of getting a better time. I'm gonna keep my eyes open if you post about your progress again. Good luck!